


Designed to be Seen

by Amy R (Brightknightie)



Category: Forever Knight
Genre: 1930s, Dresses, F/M, Fashion & Couture, Historical, Humor, Romance, Undressing, Vampire Desires, buttons, pearls
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-01-06
Updated: 2015-01-06
Packaged: 2018-03-05 11:03:53
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,082
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3117806
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Brightknightie/pseuds/Amy%20R
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Nick finds Janette's very fashionable dress very difficult to remove.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Designed to be Seen

**Author's Note:**

  * For [PJ1228](https://archiveofourown.org/users/PJ1228/gifts).



“Indeed, many of the dresses of the period look as if they had been designed to be seen from the rear.”  
— James Laver, _The Concise History of Costume and Fashion_ (1969)

_1932 Los Angeles_

“Careful!” Janette laughed up at Nick as his fingers searched blindly for the fastenings that must be at the back of her beaded collar. Her fingers had found the buttons of his tuxedo shirt easily enough, but, even in the dark, he considered that facing her task gave her the advantage in the race. Janette said, “I intend to wear this dress again.”

“A second wearing?” Nick brushed his lips against her temple and continued exploring the back of her heavy black gown — or, rather, the absence of a back, which had fascinated him all night. Yet now that he finally had Janette and her daring dress in his hands, he couldn’t seem to separate the two. He teased, “How thrifty of you, in these hard times.”

“Oh, there’s nothing economical about this gown, Nicolas.” Janette leaned back her head to lift her mouth closer to his. And closer. “Troubled times recommend portable wealth.” Closer yet.

Nick met her lips. Savoring, he tasted nothing but Janette herself and the federally prohibited contents of assorted hip flasks from the studio party they had both attended. Janette had not fed on human blood this night. The realization inflamed Nick’s hunger, blazing as fiercely as even the flavor that he had forbidden himself could have done, because if Janette had not been hunting mortals this evening, then she must have been hunting... him.

Could she have missed him as much as he had missed her?

When Nick had entered the crowded dance hall, with his typewritten invitation tucked into his tuxedo jacket’s inner pocket, Janette had met his eyes just long enough for him to see mischief glint in hers. Then she had turned around. Apparently, her slight twirl merely replied to the film producer at her elbow. But, with her hair twisted high against her head, baring her neck, her pivot revealed directly to Nick what looked like little more than an iridescent cord from nape to hips, barely keeping the snug, black silk from spilling forth the lush curves below her spine.

Nick hadn’t seen Janette in over a year. Suddenly, he’d been unable able to look away from her. All the moments that he’d longed to share with her had pooled together, then, rushing for her to drink them out.

It had been Lacroix’s fault, of course. Lacroix had repeated yet again one of his favorite object lessons, letting Janette go her own way while refusing Nick that freedom. Nick hadn’t begrudged Janette her good fortune. But he hadn’t sought her in it, either. As often as he’d reached for her, alone in the day, he’d kept himself from exposing her sweet illusion of liberty through his bitter reality as Lacroix’s slave.

Yesterday, though, Lacroix had departed on business, traveling away so far and fast by modern contrivances that Nick, too, felt almost free. Almost himself. Almost… redeemed. Now, in the darkness before dawn. Here, in Janette’s home and arms. Because, her one heart in all the world and time knew him and yet asked him to be nothing but himself.

Nick’s fingertips skimmed from fabric to flesh, seeking where to unfasten that ornamental cord. He found only more beads. He growled in frustration.

Janette purred deep in her throat.

Nick’s hands clenched.

Something snapped.

“ _Maladroite_!” Janette protested. She pushed Nick away and stepped past him to light a stained-glass lamp on a low table. Even vampiric night vision had limits. “I told you to be careful. Where did it fall?”

“It’s just a bead.” Nick watched, bemused but charmed, as Janette slipped off her high-heeled shoes and got down on her hands and knees to seek the tiny bauble. The iridescent cord slid back and forth between Janette’s shoulder blades as she hunted, and her silk skirt pulled tighter and tighter, until Nick began reciting this year’s World Series statistics to himself, and regretting for new reasons that the Yankees had swept in just four games.

Nick had noticed fashion lowering hemlines as the financial slump worsened and the affairs of nations grew less sane. Until tonight, he hadn’t imagined that the same fashion might offer compensation.

“‘Just a bead,’” Janette huffed. “Ah-hah!” She sat on the rug and held up her prize. “Look again, Nicolas.”

It was a pearl, round, luminous and lustrous, but as dark as pewter. And it wasn’t a bead, but a button; a silver setting clamped delicately around it and extended a shank loop.

Nick began to reach for it, but dropped his hand when Janette raised an eyebrow. “Is it one of those new Japanese pearls? What do they call those?”

“They call them ‘cultured,’ and no, mine are natural.” Janette held the button to the light, and Nick recognized that it matched pearls on her earlobes. His attention had been elsewhere, before. Janette set the pearl button in an empty ashtray on the table under the lamp. “Most of the beads on this dress are ordinary mother of pearl, manufactured here in the states. But the buttons down the back are Tahitian pearls — black pearls.” Janette extended her hand.

Nick pulled her to her feet. She pressed close and amused herself exploring their new height differential, now that her shoes were off, until Nick resorted to baseball figures again.

Janette laughed and turned her back to him. “Well, Nicolas?”

What had seemed a solid cord was in fact two strips of fabric, encrusted with handmade beads and secured by tiny gems. “Maybe you should take off your dress yourself. I’ll watch.”

“Putting on this dress by touch alone took an eternity! You’re the one who can see the buttons.” Janette looked over her shoulder at him. Her eyes were molten gold. “You’re the one with the hands of a doctor, a painter, a pianist...”

Nick rubbed her shoulders. His fangs wouldn’t stay back any longer. But as much as he wanted Janette’s blood, he didn’t want only her blood. “Remember that time in Montmédy, despite your panniers? Even better, New Orleans?”

”Mmmm, under that crinoline.” Janette leaned back against him, all the way back, demonstrating the difference between her modern skirt and those vanished contraptions.

The dress came off.

In the heat of the moment, Nick promised to sew every button back on himself. Janette held him to it.

— **end** —

**Author's Note:**

> **Disclaimer.** This is fanfiction of _Forever Knight_. Please don’t mistake it for anything else. (Tahitian pearls exist. Vampires don’t.)
> 
> **Beta-reading.** Thank you, Skieswideopen! Thank you very much!
> 
> **Inspiration.** In the 2014/2015 Fandom Stocking game, PJ included Nick/Janette (the “Immortal Beloved” couple faction) on her wish list. Thanks for the prompt!
> 
> **Canon, history and fashion.** In the flashbacks of “Father’s Day” (1925), Lacroix and Janette track Nick to Los Angeles; the next time we see them is in London, in the flashbacks of “Father Figure” (1941). This 1932 interlude is set in the depths of the Great Depression, during Prohibition in the United States, just before the midwest droughts become the Dust Bowl across the US and Canada, one year after the very first commercial crop of cultured pearls in Japan, as the whole world crept madly toward World War II. ( _My Man Godfrey_ is a famous illustration of how the amusements of the rich hardly wavered while the real world of ordinary people fell apart.) As to that dress: “Then, as the decade [1920s] drew to its close, skirts suddenly became long again and the waist resumed its normal place. … In the early 1930s, the emphasis shifted from the legs to the back. Backs were bared to the waist… and the skirt was drawn tightly over the hips so as to reveal, perhaps for the first time in history, the shape of the buttocks.” (James Laver, _The Concise History of Costume and Fashion_ , 1969).
> 
> **Thank you for reading!** Please let me know what you think.


End file.
